Diasporic Cosmopolitanism and Conservative Translocalism: Narratives of Nation Among Senegalese Migrants in Italy

This article analyses narratives of nation and belonging developed by transnational migrants who are characterised as maintaining strong ties across the countries of origin and of immigration. Most literature on the issue suggests that transnational migrants develop new forms of deterritorialised belonging, recognising themselves in imagined communities and nations unbound. Against such an interpretation, this article argues that certain cities still play an important role in the process of nation-making. Drawing from the example of the Senegalese diaspora in Italy, I shall present evidence of migrants’ strong tendency to congregate in urban settlements that become collective modes of reference, or translocalities. The article then explores the role of such translocalities in the construction, among migrants, of new narratives of identification and belonging.